Field of the Invention
The invention relates to input devices used in support of consumer electronic devices and more particularly, a portable touch sensitive input device is described.
Description of the Related Art
In order to provide accurate and consistent motion and positional data, a computer mouse requires a flat, rigid surface on which to move. Relying on the availability of the flat, rigid surface in order to operate properly can be particularly troublesome in those situations where the computing device is portable in nature since the available surfaces may not be suitable. Therefore, it has become common practice to replace the computer mouse with the touchpad in mobile computing devices such as laptop computers, portable media players, and so forth. The conventional touchpad assembly typically includes operational circuitry enclosed, within the housing of the mobile computing device and a touch sensitive surface exposed to receive touch events provided by either the user's finger(s) or other appropriate object. In this way, the typical mobile computing device can have the option of providing a keyed input (such as that provided by a keyboard or keypad) and the touch pad.
In contrast to the computer mouse, the touchpad can detect a wider variety of input events (such as multi-fingered gestures, swipes, and so forth). Since the computer mouse relies upon detection of motion in relation to the surface upon which it rests to provide the requisite data to the computing device, the wider gamut of information provided by gestural motions so easily provided by the trackpad is unavailable to the computer mouse.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide touch based input devices suitable for use with both stationary and mobile computing systems.